


Coming To

by GuileandGall



Series: Technicolor Geek Chic [1]
Category: Saints Row
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 10:15:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7753726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuileandGall/pseuds/GuileandGall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tala’s first few days after being let out of the tube are a bit of a struggle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming To

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to CelesteEnnui for beta-ing and, of course, the use of her characters. Note: I wrote this with no idea how any of this is supposed to play out. I just wanted to write Tala in this world and this happened. So … here you have it.

She still wasn’t sure what was going on. After waking up covered in something sticky and foul, surrounded by strangers, things just kept getting weirder. Most of it still didn’t make all that much sense. Her teeth tugged at the thin ring in her bottom lip as she glanced around the room. There were a lot of them, this 3rd Unit; they all seemed nice enough so far.

Two of them, Claire and Nero, kept stopping by asking her if she was all right. She always said yes. But even so, they asked the same questions, like they were working off a script: do you remember my name? What have you eaten in the last 24 hours? How did you sleep? Do you remember how you got here?

The answer to that one was always the same. No. Strangely, they never asked her her name; of course, Nero announced that after she finished coughing up crud. “Tala Darzi. Twenty-one-year-old, American. Blood Type Oh-positive.”  

Her teeth shifted to the other side of her lip, where she could bite a little harder. She stared at what a few days earlier had been small hole in the knee of her jeans. It looked better this way, gaping and shredded.

 _Tala Darzi_ , she thought again, wondering if it was really her name. It could just be something someone made up or read off a soup can. _But why? Why give her some weird name then tell her Earth was gone and they were in outer space?_ This all sounded like the plot of a bad sci-fi novel, and she was pretty sure it might be bullshit, but then she couldn’t be sure if that was even her own name, so what the hell did she know?

Her teeth ground against one another, eyes stinging. Hell, she didn’t even know what upset her this time, but she huddled back into the oversized chair she’d confiscated and pulled the borrowed hoodie a little farther forward. The shadows at the perimeter of the room, on the fringe, felt more comfortable, safer. Being in the middle of all those people made her palms sweat and her heart race. They were all so close and she didn’t know how to break into that, but she wanted to.

“Keep dreaming, Jonah,” Lorcán warned, bumping the other man’s shoulder with his own.

“Watch it. Besides it’s not like you were a gold farmer before all this,” Jonah crooned. “And,” he drew out, “Yeah!” The triumph shone clearly in his grin.

Laughter from the women playing cards at the table rang out, muffling Lorcán’s growl. Plastic chips clinked against the wood of the table.

“I raise. Forty,” Mel declared with a confident air.

The man across the table from her barely even spared her a glance as he quickly counted out the chips. “Call.” He leaned forward, his voice dripping with an intense seductiveness. “Let’s have it, then. On the table.”

Mel’s lips curled into a quirky grin and she laid her cards out in a neat fan. “Four queens.”

“Damnit,” Byron replied, slapping his full house down on the wood.

When Lena raised her hand, Mel slapped it without even looking.

“Card sharks. The both of you.”

“You gonna deal or bitch?” Lena chimed, sitting forward again for the next hand.

Byron just gave her a look as he shuffled the cards.

When the “purring” rose in volume, the young woman’s attention shifted toward the great beast who lolled onto his side. His head overtook most of Blu’s lap while the unit leader scratched his ears. Billy looked scary, like he could gobble her up and ask for seconds, but he seemed very much like a puppy--playful and cuddly. At his huffed trumpet, the outsider startled.

No matter how much she wanted to trash talk with the boys or see if Billy knew how to play fetch, something anchored her to that chair in the back corner of the room. It was darker, safer. She hooked a thread of cotton around her finger. It bit into her flesh as she ripped it free from the growing hole over her knee. Over the day spent picking at the tear, her fingers grew raw, bleeding just a little. Her dark clothes, the chair, and the floor all bore scraps of the whitish blue threads and fuzzies.

The hollow sound of heels echoed off the walls. She straightened, recognizing the measured rhythm of Claire’s long stride, it sounded like the metronomic swish of her hips. In the chair, the young woman moved quickly, sitting up a little straighter as she swiped the back of the sweatshirt’s sleeves over her face. Both hands then pulled back into her sleeves and tucked tightly into her lap as the tall blond approached … again.

The medic traded greetings with several of the others as she crossed the common room.

“Hi, Tala! How are you feeling?” she asked as she perched on the edge of the nearby table, crossing her long legs.

“Fine, Claire” she grumbled, stating the woman’s name clearly in an effort to shorten the Q & A session.

Her eyes darted around the room before returning to the doctor. She felt exposed, singled out … like an outcast. It bubbled up again, and she tried to swallow it back once more. Then Claire went all hazy in her vision before the rest of the questions even started.

She just wanted it to be over and done. So, in a voice barely above a whisper, she listed off the answers to the other questions without prompting. “I slept five hours. No, I don’t remember what happened, and I just had an apple and peanut butter. Yogurt for breakfast. Whatever that vegetable pasta thing was last night. I can keep going if you like?”  

She only held Claire’s gaze because she feared that looking down might just ensure everyone getting to see the freak cry. She didn’t want that more than she wanted to disappear inside her hoodie.

Claire’s hand on her arm threatened to do just that. It felt so familiar, that gentle touch with just a hint of reassurance in the squeeze. “Why don’t you tell me what _you_ ’d like, Tala?”

Her chest tightened again, and her breath came quicker, but she didn’t answer. Though she thought about it a long time. Claire gave her arm another squeeze, a soft rub, then a pat. When Claire stood up to leave, an answer came to her. “A computer, or a book. Maybe both?” she asked, looking up at her.

The desire overwhelmed her and she was nearly certain Claire saw the tears harboring in the corners of her eyes before she dropped her face to stare at her balled up hands.

Claire’s hand laid on her shoulder again, solid and strong, almost emphasizing her words. “I’ll see what I can do, honey.”

 


End file.
